[Bhikku]

Mitchw describes the 'hook' system well. One of the interesting things this does is ensure that no Quality ever goes to waste. I'm sure you've all played games where you had a neat character concept in mind, and invested some valuable skill points in skills that aren't entirely pertinent to dungeon-crawling/wizarding/espionage/whatever, but which lent a touch of individual style and tied in to your character's background. Unfortunately, in the course of the actual gameplay (if your experience is anything like mine) you never had an opportunity to use this background material, and lamented the effort, finding that you'd be better served by more focused skill spread.

Well, in PDQ, it's assumed that whatever Quality you find the least useful (whether it's Beautician or Accountant or Former Cook's Assistant) is the first one you're going to reduce, since it's not doing you any good anyway. But that makes this Quality the central hook for your next adventure/session/episode - next time you might be challenged to give the Wicked Stepmother a makeover, or the local dragon needs his taxes done, or the ogres will spare you if you can make a stew that's even tastier than people are (or for that matter, they want you to compete against their cook, Iron Chef style). Suddenly a Quality that you took just to be interesting, and which looked like it was going to be disappointingly useless, becomes an important focus of the story.

As far as magic goes, there are two ways it's done. First is normal Qualities that happen to be magical - suppose you wanted a Peter Pan-type character and gave him Flying: Good (+2). That's no different from giving your reformed pirate Good Sailing or giving your woodsman Good Hunting. In most ZoZ campaigns, there'd be no need to even test the quality unless you were attempting special aerial stunts or were trying to out-fly a hungry gryphon or something.

The second is the Magic Star Qualities - these are the ones that are marked with an asterisk, and they're so special that adding the magic star to a quality counts as using up a rank of quality during character creation. (If that's confusing at all, just understand that the broader magic mojo accounts for more of your character's focus, and leave it at that.) As for how it works: fabulously, in every sense of the word. You see, when you use a Magic Star Quality, whether it's Kindly Witch* (Good) or Davy Jones' Nephew* (Expert) or even Toymaker* (Good), you can attempt darn near anything. The player and GM briefly negotiate the intended effect - does it make sense in the context of the Quality and does it suit the mood of the campaign?

The interesting bit is the second half of the process, where they determine the Cost and/or the Catch. These are defined in the game, albeit pretty loosely, but essentially the magic will either use up some kind of resource (such as time, equipment, favors, etc) or will have some kind of loophole or consequence. Every fairy tale where the princess is put into a magical sleep until she is awakened by her true love's kiss? That's a Catch. The more dramatic the magic's effect, the more cost, catch, or both will be involved. And notably: Magic Always Works. If the die roll fails, the magic still takes effect - it just doesn't do what the player wanted.

Here's an example: Our heroes are locked in the wicked king's dungeon and must try to escape. Nobody happens to have a quality like Thief or Escape Artist, so they've got to get creative. If someone is a Toymaker*, he might be able to craft a wind-up tin-soldier who can retrieve a key for them, with a Cost requiring him to scrounge enough material and take the time to build it - so by the time they escape, they may no longer have time to call for reinforcements, but must deal with the wicked king's plans alone. If instead one of the heroes has a Bag of Tricks*, perhaps one of his tricks is a similar tin soldier that will actually pick the lock, but with a Catch: if he gets them out of this, he demands his freedom, so the character won't be able to repeat the trick until he acquires a new gimmick to keep in his bag.

It's an elegant freeform magic system. The book goes into it a bit more, certainly giving more examples both in the rules section and in the campaign journal showing how it worked in actual play. This is one of the few games where magic feels truly magical, but the Cost and Catch approach also helps to ensure that a character with Magic Star Qualities can't outshine the other players. My compliments to Mr. Underkoffler for this creation!